Only Murders in the Building: To Protect and Serve

September 21, 2021 12:58 PM - Season 1, Episode 6

Mabel brings her new friends (and an old one) to her childhood home to meet her mother. Meanwhile, Detective Williams starts to have her own doubts about the case as she prepares for motherhood.

description via hulu.com

posted by everybody had matching towels (18 comments total)

That last line and shot, lololololol
posted by everybody had matching towels at 4:05 PM on September 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

Nathan Lane was incredible in this episode, I love him so much.
posted by grandiloquiet at 5:39 PM on September 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

I am a little confused. What does it mean that the toxicology report “wasn’t submitted”?

Did Det. Williams imply that someone higher up in the department was trying to suppress any official investigation?

And yes, Nathan Lane was great.
posted by Naberius at 7:07 PM on September 21, 2021

Based on what the detective said (in terms of her career being wrecked if she pursued this case), I think they mean someone wants this...not looked into. If not an active cover-up, definitely a "look the other way."

At first I was surprised Nathan Lane's character would fund something that would bring attention to the case, but if I met the Martin Short character and he told me that he thought the murder I committed -- which had been ruled a suicide! -- had been committed by Sting, I would probably hand over some money, too. Selena Gomez knowing the guy who was murdered is what cracked the case wide open, and he had no way of expecting that.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:23 PM on September 21, 2021 [5 favorites]

This episode had a fantastic ending.
posted by snofoam at 3:19 AM on September 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yes, it sounds like Williams sussed out that there must be some kind of coverup going on, and it would risk/ruin her career if she did anything about it. So....hey, let's send it to the podcast!
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:24 AM on September 22, 2021

I am confused by the fact that: (1) Zoe was Oscar's girlfriend up to the moment she died, (2) Oscar was pretty quickly sent to jail for Zoe's murder, (3) immediately upon getting out of prison, Oscar has cozied up to Mabel as if they were really in love the whole time, and (4) this doesn't seem to bother anyone. Am I missing something?

They don't seem to suggest that Oscar's relationship with Zoe was fake. I'm still loving the show, but I'm confused that no one has remarked on this yet.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:37 AM on September 22, 2021 [6 favorites]

In the trenches: How Only Murders In The Building honors the tradition of detective wear [AV Club]

I went into this series with really low expectations and have been happily wrong! I'm really enjoying it so far.
posted by ellieBOA at 11:25 AM on September 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

Lane's probably going to be a red herring in the end (there's four? episodes left and there's a second season coming), but I did jump on the possibility that he was behind Tim's murder a few minutes before the protagonists did.

Mostly because the cutout of Stabler in Mabel's room reminded me of the SVU rule: the most famous guest star is always the perp.
posted by thecaddy at 12:55 PM on September 22, 2021 [3 favorites]

I sorta wondered on Oscar and Mabel too, but maybe she write him in prison, or it was an unstated crush, I dunno...
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:15 PM on September 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

I loved seeing Mandy Gonzalez turn up as Mabel's mom! I had recently seen some clips from her performance as Nina in the In the Heights OBC (which sadly don't seem to be on youtube anymore!) so it was funny to see her go from bright-eyed but lost teenager to world-weary middle-aged mom.

They don't seem to suggest that Oscar's relationship with Zoe was fake. I'm still loving the show, but I'm confused that no one has remarked on this yet.

That confused me as well, especially because for some reason I misremembered that Tim (the dead guy) was Zoe's boyfriend, so I had to do a few moments of "wait, what?" I will say, though that Aaron Dominguez and Selena Gomez have GREAT chemistry and that allowed me to sort of brush this aside. I really did believe they've known and loved each other for years.

I am really growing to just LOVE the relationship between the three main characters, and it was especially cool to see it from the perspective of an "outsider" (Mabel's mom) this week. Yes, they're sad, but so is Mabel, and they are all definitely weird, and it really seems like they are helping each other get over the losses they've each experienced and re-engage with the world in an authentic way.
posted by lunasol at 2:44 PM on September 22, 2021 [4 favorites]

thecaddy: the most famous guest star is always the perp.

So it was Sting!
posted by praiseb at 4:56 PM on September 22, 2021 [9 favorites]

Re: Mabel and Oscar, in the episode that went into more detail about the New Year's Eve party, I definitely got the sense that they both liked each other more than their respective partners, but either didn't know that about each other or didn't want to break up the friend group. My theory is that Mabel started dating Tim because they knew each other the longest and were good friends and it "made sense" (and they were both pretty young so that seemed like a good reason), but Mabel started to actually like Oscar more later.
posted by catabananza at 11:30 PM on September 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

I LOVED the Stabler cardboard cutout. Also, I don't think Mabel and Tim were ever a couple? Just kinda third and 4th wheels when the other two members of their crew got together.
posted by emd3737 at 6:44 AM on September 23, 2021 [5 favorites]

Bah, you're right, I assumed it was two couples in the friend group, but thinking back I think I just read too much into Mabel and Tim being good friends...
posted by catabananza at 4:44 PM on September 24, 2021

Oliver's meta commentary ("We continued staring at the jewels for what felt like a beat too long") is a delight, as is the roving voiceover narration.

I have no idea where the murder plotline is going, but I'm more or less fine with that.
posted by eponym at 7:22 PM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm concerned that Amy Ryan gets an up-front credit and that means automatically that she's the murderer? She hasn't had a big enough role as of yet to warrant that credit!
posted by BlahLaLa at 4:31 PM on September 26, 2021 [6 favorites]

I really love the meta-commentary within the show. Oliver's comment about the jewels for sure. And Steve Martin's character literally scoring their conversation as they talk. I am also pretty sure that the title treatment and the intro are meant to be reminiscent of The New Yorker (you know that both Martin and Short's characters must have a huge stack of unread issues!).
posted by radioamy at 4:28 PM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]